Today’s Gospel reading about the healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus prompted five of our musical choices: Your hands, O Lord and Praise my soul both speak of healing, and Be thou my vision links the story to our wider dependence on God’s loving protection. Marty Haugen’s Now in this banquet makes this link too, addressing God in one of the verses as light for the blind.

The choir also sang Cum appropinquaret Iesus by Ginés Pérez, a founder of the Valencian school of composition in the late sixteenth century, in an edition prepared by Esperanza Rodriguez, a former choral scholar here at Salford. The text of the piece is a précis of today’s Gospel reading, but, puzzlingly, begins with our Lord approaching (appropinquaret) Jericho rather than leaving it. Explanation, anyone?

From Thursday to Saturday the Cathedral was host to the annual Conference of Cathedral Deans in England and Wales, joined on Friday and Saturday by a meeting of the Conference of Catholic Directors of Music, the body bringing together the cathedral music directors in England and Wales. Mass on Friday evening was concelebrated by all the deans, with the cathedral choir in attendance, and a small but exceptionally talented singing assembly!

We kept to our normal musical fare, providing fellow cathedral musicians whose regular output in some cases might be more traditional and reserved in greater measure to the choir, a flavour of the actuosa participatio which we think of as our hallmark. Perhaps the Nowak Gloria and Bob Hurd’s Missa Ubi Caritas in particular were good advertisements for the song of the assembly, to say nothing of Paul Inwood’s well-known psalm setting.

and Graham Kendrick’s The Servant King made the same connection. Stephen Dean’s Father, if this cup has verses from the same chapter of Isaiah (chapter 53).

We sang Maurice Besly’s setting of the famous prayer often attributed to Cardinal Newman. In rehearsal I asked choir members who had heard of Besly, and who had heard of Newman? The respective answers, of course, were almost no-one and almost everyone. This, indirectly, was the key to performing the piece - understating the simple homophonic chant-like musical setting, in order to let the words of the prayer come to the fore, in their calm, even serene declaration of dependence on God’s loving protection. Sung at Communion, it echoed the same dependence found in the Communion antiphon and today’s Responsorial psalm, both taken from Psalm 32(33): May your love be upon us O Lord, as we place all our hope in you.

Today’s Communion antiphon The rich suffer want and go hungry, but nothing shall be lacking to those who fear the Lord mirrors the Gospel reading from Mark concerning rich men, camels and needles. We had Byrd’s O Quam Suavis from Book II of the Gradualia of 1607, which includes the line fastidiosos divites dimittens inanes (“sending the haughty rich away empty”). It’s a revolutionary text, like the Magnificat, but here clothed in the most graceful and irenic disguise.

The first reading (Wis 7:7-11), placing wisdom above riches, was the main scriptural source for Diane Murden’s and my Wisdom Come Softly. It was conceived as a piece for Pentecost, with the last verse based on the prayer Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, but it seemed just as appropriate to sing it today. We used to do it as a choir piece, but we’ve sung it enough times in the last eight years for our our assembly to sing it confidently, and we did it that way today.

There was more wisdom in today’s responsorial psalm, Ps 89(90): Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart. This and other verses from the same psalm are also set in Bernadette Farrell’s Restless is the heart. With the refrain echoing St Augustine (from the Confessions), it’s a good addition to our repertoire of Communion processional songs.

Today’s readings had the theme of marriage, and our opening and closing hymns reflected this. For O Perfect Love we had Sir Richard Terry’s magnificent tune Highwood, which must be the best hymn tune that (almost) no-one ever sings.

Daniel Bath’s superb setting of today’s entrance antiphon, beginning O Lord, you have given everything its place in the world to my mind worked well at the Preparation of the Gifts, where it didn’t need to be well-known and instantly singable, in the way an entrance song might if it is truly to serve the purpose of fostering the unity of those who have been gathered, as GIRM tells us.

Ed Nowak’s Mass of the Creator Spirit is that extraordinarily rare bird, a musical setting that gives the singing assembly its proper role, while offering something genuinely musically challenging and rewarding for an ambitious choir. The Gloria, in particular, fits the bill, and the fiery organ part holds out interesting challenges too. I wish there were more pieces like it.

Martini was Mozart’s teacher, and by all accounts his setting of the Latin text Seek ye first the kingdom of God was proposed by way of a corrective to a more wayward and inspired setting by his teenage pupil. We’ve done Mozart’s version in the past, and we’ll come back to it soon. It’s much the better of the two.

Welcome

This is a record of musical activities at St John's Cathedral, Salford - what we've been doing and what's coming up, and some thoughts on the musical planning process. You can also find information about joining the choir, and about our choral scholarships program.